SOL16: Artifacts

            Artifacts from my Alabama pilgrimage last month. The collage card is by Michelle Browder, artist and leader of MoreThan tours in Montgomery. You can see more of her work at iammorethan7053.com.

            Alabama became a state 200 years ago, and a historical house I visited in Mobile handed out these tokens. Parts of what became the state were claimed by Georgia, and parts had been what had been West Florida, and was the site of much land speculation as slavery expanded into what was at the beginning of the 19th century the southwest frontier. The Birmingham tie pin celebrates what had been an industrial city; many of its workers were convict labor, a form of post-bellum slavery.

            That tiny bottle? It contains soil from the site of the lynching memorial in Montgomery. It echoes an exhibit at the nearby Legacy Museum: From Slavery to Mass Incarceration, where the locations of known lynchings are commemorated with gallon bottles of soil from each site. Browder collected soil from the site of the National Memorial for Peace and Reconciliation and presents this memento to tour participants.

 

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SOL15: Bereavement

            I am still going to the VNS bereavement group, three-plus years after Jack died. I’m fine, but there is something about being in a group of people who share the same experience—in this case, grief at losing a spouse, partner, or close family member—that is unlike any other relationship.

            The group met this morning, and afterwards I went to lunch with two other members, A., whose husband had Parkinson’s and died after complications after a fall, and C., whose father, mother, and sister (her entire family) all died within the past few years, the mother and sister within four months of each other. A. is close to my age, mid-70s, while C. is around 50.

            During our long lunch and conversation, I related the circumstances around Jack’s death: his fall, complications, hospitalization after edema for unknown reasons, multiple myeloma diagnosis, more complications, and his ultimate decision to stop treatment and go into hospice, dying just five days later.

            As I related the sequence of events, especially my extremely mixed feelings about Jack’s decision, my great reluctance to lose him, yet my understanding that the decision was his to make and that I shouldn’t, couldn’t force him to continue living in a way he couldn’t accept, I started crying. This was such a terrible moment for both of us, and I’ve gone over it so many times since, while Jack, of course, is unable to second-guess himself.

            A. and C. were so comforting and so reassuring, and I knew that they understood my feelings in a way that someone who hasn’t been through this experience can only imagine. This is why I keep going to the bereavement group.

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SOL14: Book Group

            What do you do when you haven’t finished reading your book group book? Do you skip it so you can finish the book, and talk to members after to create your own discussion? Or do you go to the group anyway and try not to listen when they talk about the ending?

            I faced this situation tonight. Our book was A God in Ruins, by Kate Atkinson. I got started on it late because my other book group was supposed to meet last Sunday, and I was late starting that book, Manhattan Beach, by Jennifer Egan (it’s extremely good, BTW), and managed to finish it before our meeting day, although it was canceled at the last minute.

         A God in Ruins is also very good, and I wasn’t the only one who hadn’t finished it. There was some talk of exiling us non-finishers to the bathroom while the end was discussed, but we refused.

            Am I sorry I now know something about the ending when I’m only halfway through the book? Only a little bit. It would have been a shock, for sure, and I would then have felt tempted to reread the book to see if there were any hints to that twist that I missed. But since I now know, I can be looking for those hints as I read the second half of A God in Ruins, and I won’t feel tricked. And that twist also explains one of my questions on pages 143-144. 

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I’m participating in the 12th annual Slice of Life Challenge over at Two Writing Teachers. This is day 1 of the 31-day challenge.  It’s not too late to make space for daily writing in a community that is encouraging, enthusiastic, and eager to read what you have to slice about.  Join in!

SOL13: Movie Review—“Gloria Bell”

          I went to the movies yesterday with an old friend from out of town. We saw Gloria Bell, an independent film that’s a remake of a Chilean film by the same Chilean director, Sebastian Lelio. The film is about a divorced woman in her 50s with two grown children; she has a job and loves to dance, and the film follows her life for what looks like perhaps a year or less.

            While Julianne Moore’s performance is great—and I love that she wears glasses throughout, often even when she is dancing—the person she plays does things that at times seem mysterious to me. She meets a man at a disco—yes, there is a supposed to be a dance/bar in L.A. where middle-aged people go to dance to ’80s disco; does such a place exist?—they have sex and then a relationship, but when she takes him to meet her family, he feels out of place and leaves without saying anything, leaving her to worry about what happened. He doesn’t return her phone calls for a while, but then appears to tell her how angry he felt at being left out. You can see her thinking, “he is so not worth it,” and she gets into her car and drives away. He then stalks her via phone, calling incessantly, but after she sees a quirky street performer, she answers one of his calls, and the next scene is the two of them on an airplane, to Las Vegas. Why?

          She also drinks a lot, without that being an issue. As the widow of an alcoholic, I want to know whether this is a problem for her, whether others think it is a problem. Drinking a lot is not innocent behavior.

            And her upstairs neighbor, the son of her landlady, is either noisily abusing his partner, having a nervous breakdown, or both. She never calls the police, though she does call her landlady, but she doesn’t make it clear in the call what problems the neighbor seems to be exhibiting. Why not?

            There is still a lot to like in the film. If you like disco music, the soundtrack is great. Gloria has the kind of relationship some women have with their grown children who are still trying to keep a distance from their parents while continuing to be in touch. She has a job with responsibilities, but it’s not her passion; she seems to be an insurance claims person. And she revels in sex. It is so refreshing to see a middle-aged woman (Moore is 58) having sex and loving it—and finding at least one man who wants to have sex with her. In some ways, the movie is a collection of slices of life. 

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SOL11: My Free-lance Working Day

            Twice a week, Monday being one of them, I do free-lance copy editing for the magazine I last worked for full-time. The day goes like this:

            Get up, shower, dress, breakfast.

            Do stretches to avoid pain in my leg from spinal stenosis.

            Between 10:30 and 11:30, I vpn to the server at the magazine where I find my work.

Today there are 10 files, and eight are already ready for me. Because there are so many, I download them to my laptop and close out of the server. It’s quicker to work offline.

            The files I’m reading are collections of short book reviews in a variety of genres. I read for sense, grammar, language use, punctuation, publication style (e.g., a book about kabbalah may capitalize Kabbalah in the book, but our dictionary lower-cases it, so the review must lower-case it). I don’t find any egregious errors (once, in a review of a book about impeachment, the reviewer wrote that Lyndon Johnson was impeached, meaning of course Andrew Johnson; I caught that) today, but it still takes me three hours to get through all 29 reviews.

            Once my work is done, I eat a salad with leftover salmon I’d sauteed last night.

            Then I realize I have time to see Green Book. A feel-good movie, mostly for white people. I want to learn more about Dr. Donald Shirley, and there just happens to be an article about him in the New York Times Arts section today.

            Back home, I eat a Trader Joe’s frozen vegetable biryani and do the laundry. Then I write this. 

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SOL10: Missionary Work?

            I was walking up Broadway from the grocery store this evening when I heard a voice in the distance. It was clear who or what it was: some sort of conflict on the street? a car radio turned up loud?

           As I got to my street, the voice was louder. Looking around, I noticed a man standing across the street and up the block a bit. He was preaching. It wasn’t clear at first what religion he was preaching, but soon it appeared to be some form of Christian. And his voice sounded amplified. That was different.

            Some years ago, an older Haitian man walked up and down Broadway, usually in the spring and summer, chanting, “Hallelujah, hallelujah, God loves you, God loves you,” over and over. But he hasn’t been seen for quite a while.

            Proselytizing is not common in my neighborhood. If it hadn’t been so cold, I might have listened a bit longer to hear his points, just out of curiosity. I wonder if the preacher won any converts.

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SOL9: Baseball Celebrity Sighting

               Every March I meet with a group of Mets fans to talk over the previous season, guess how many (or few) games the Mets will win this season, and play a sometimes easy, sometimes fiendish game of baseball trivia.  We often meet at a microbrewery as two of our members are beer aficionados or at a sports bar.

               Today, it was at BV’s, in Stamford, owned by Bobby Valentine, a former player and a manager of the Mets for seven years, including their 2000 subway World Series with the Yankees. The eight of us were in the middle of our trivia game, in a Jeopardy-format with an overall theme of Horseshoes and Hand Grenades (I think the only answer I got right was a manager who managed two New York teams, one with World Series in the ‘50s and one with losing seasons in the ‘60s—Casey Stengel) when who should appear at the end of our table but the owner himself. 

               It took me maybe five seconds to realize this was Bobby V himself. He regaled us with stories for more than an hour—he might still be there, but I had to leave to come back to the city to meet friends.

              Here’s one of his stories.  When he heard we were playing trivia, he reported having been at a recent event with Joe Torre, who was managing the Yankees when Bobby V was managing the Mets in 2000. Some “civilian” came up to them and said, “I’ll give you $5,000 if you can tell me who was in the starting Mets lineup in right field in the fifth game of the 2000 World Series.” Even Bobby V couldn’t remember in that moment what player that was. As he told the story, we all began guessing: Benny Agbayani (from Hawaii, and one of 10 known MLB players of Filipino background)? No, he played left field. Timo Perez? No, he was hurt. Mike Kinkade? No, he was hurt, too. The answer: Bubba Trammell, who no one could remember because he was only with the Mets for four months.

               There were many more stories, and it was clear that Bobby V hung out at his own bar so he could find new audiences for the stories of his baseball career.

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SOL8: Reminders

            This morning I was trying to put some food containers onto a top shelf in the kitchen, but felt some resistance. Reaching to the back of the shelf, I scraped out the following items: half a dozen small brown paper bags and a card offering gift discounts to Netflix, with an expiration date of October 31, 2008.

            Here was a strong reminder of my late husband. Jack saved those paper bags because when he bought yogurt on his way to the gym or a movie, he often wasn’t given a bag to hold the container. So he saved bags that he did get, and he kept them on the top shelf of that cabinet.

            Now why was that Netflix offer up there? Did it come in the mail and he just tossed it to get it out of the way? I’m sure he wasn’t planning to give those discount cards to anyone—that wasn’t a thing he did.

            But that date, October 31, 2008. So many things are true of that date. Jack hadn’t yet fallen on the ice. My mother hadn’t died yet. Neither had my father or my sister, though her cancer had recurred. I was still working full-time at Publishers Weekly, which was still part of the corporate empire of Reed-Elsevier. The economy had just collapsed, and Barack Obama was running for president. The election was less than a week away, but I was convinced Obama would win, because I’d been doing data entry for the Democratic Party, and canvassers in Muncie, Indiana, were reporting that a third of the voters they spoke with said they would vote for Obama. In Indiana! As Republican a state as there was, a state where the KKK had of the 1920s had been in full flower.

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SOL6: Why I (Sometimes) Hate Technology

            I’m going to Connecticut on Saturday to meet a fellow group of New York Mets fans for our annual preseason get-together to hope for better things than last year and play trivia. Because my usual subway stop will be closed this weekend, I thought it would be easier to buy my train ticket online in advance.

            I have the MTA eTix app on my phone, so I clicked on it, and after clicking on my starting station and destination station, a pop-up window told me the app is out-of-date and I should click on Install Now.

           Clicking on that button, however, just gets me the generic App Store, and when I search for MTA eTix, I get a No Results message. Hmmm.

            Maybe I could get it on my laptop? The laptop finds the MTA eTix app in the App Store, but doesn’t let me download it because it’s only for the iPhone. Hmmm.

            But if I go to the App Store app on my phone and search MTA eTix, I find it easily. Now why couldn’t the original app’s link to the App Store take me to that latest version of the MTA eTix app? And why couldn’t the App Store that link went to find the MTA eTix app?

            Technology: it drives you crazy when it isn’t giving you the greatest pleasure.

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SOL5: Why I Love Facebook

            Lots of people are now hating Facebook. They don’t like having their personal information collected for who knows what nefarious purpose. They fear becoming addicted to reading post after post after post for hours. But the thing is, we also like keeping in touch with our friends and relatives, and we can’t always be on the phone or seeing people F2F.

            I recently made a pilgrimage to Alabama, to Montgomery and Birmingham, to visit civil rights and African-American history museums and memorials. I posted frequently during the trip about what I was seeing and what I thought about it. Friends commented occasionally, and those were encouraging, and obvious, connections.

            But as well, yesterday I ran into a neighbor who’s also a FB friend, who hadn’t commented or “liked.” She stopped me to tell me how much she had enjoyed reading my posts about the trip, and how much she also wants to go to these places. And we talked for a while. And today, I met a work colleague, who also told me how much she had enjoyed reading about my trip.

            So I know I am reaching many more people than those who bother to comment or click “like.” I like that connection, that reinforcement that I am not alone, that others are touched by what I throw out into the Internet void. There is a there out there. 

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I’m participating in the 12th annual Slice of Life Challenge over at Two Writing Teachers. This is day 1 of the 31-day challenge.  It’s not too late to make space for daily writing in a community that is encouraging, enthusiastic, and eager to read what you have to slice about.  Join in!

SOL4: Tax Time!

            I met with my tax preparer, JD, at H&R Block this afternoon. It took three hours to get through, much longer than usual because I had an RMD (required minimum distribution problem), and JD labored over the draft of a letter I would have to write to the IRS to request a penalty waiver. Along the way he seemed to think I’d gotten bad information from the company that held this particular retirement account, advised me to close it out, then backtracked and gave me a different suggestion.

         Once that problem got settled, and it turns out I won’t have to ask for the penalty waiver until my return for next year, things moved along smoothly. I’m getting a small refund from the feds, but have to pay  the state a more substantial amount—fortunately, I do have the money.

            Next JD printed out my copy of the return, which has already been filed electronically, and my estimated tax vouchers for both the feds and the state. Then he took scissors and carefully cut the excess paper off of the vouchers and the address labels, saying, “This is the part of my job I learned in kindergarten.” Then he put each label and voucher into its own envelope. “I’m a fairly methodical person," he said. "Perhaps not good in some situations, but good for this job.”

            I had to agree.

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I’m participating in the 12th annual Slice of Life Challenge over at Two Writing Teachers. This is day 1 of the 31-day challenge.  It’s not too late to make space for daily writing in a community that is encouraging, enthusiastic, and eager to read what you have to slice about.  Join in!

SOL3: Scheduling

            Part of today has been spent around events, one today, another possibly tomorrow, and a third for Wednesday.

            Today was supposed to be a movie discussion group. We see one or two specified movies on our own time, then meet monthly to discuss. But we’re a small group, and if two or three people can’t come, discussion is less interesting—and when weather gets involved... It was

supposed to start raining or snowing late afternoon today, so we decided to cancel. E-mail took care of this one.

            Tomorrow revolves around a friend who is in from out of town for a few days, and a mutual friend who wants to see her. Plus I have a theater ticket for the out-of-town friend I need to get to her because we can’t meet before the theater. So I arranged dinner, which we’ll order in, at the mutual friend’s home tomorrow evening. This required all technologies: phone and texting and e-mail.

            Wednesday is my regularly scheduled women’s group. But one person is not available, another hasn’t been heard from, and trying to reschedule has run up against our too-busy lives. Texting and voicemail is handling this one, and it’s still up in the air whether we will meet or not. 

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SOL2: Small World

            A week ago I was at a writing community I’m part of, Women Writers in Bloom Poetry Salon. Every month, the organizer, JP Howard, brings a published writer to the salon for a workshop, then to read her (usually, though sometimes the feature has been a man) work and to answer questions, about writing, about being published, etc.

           A week ago, the featured writer was DaMaris Hill. Her workshop was about revision, how to take a poem, or any piece of writing, that is or has become lifeless and wake it up. Partly, she suggested doing this through using methods from hip-hop, like remixing and sampling. (I won’t go into any detail, since this is her work, and I don’t want to be appropriating it.) The book she read from is her most recent, A Bound Woman Is a Dangerous Thing, in which she writes persona poems for African-American women, from Harriet Tubman to Sandra Bland, some of whom have been incarcerated. As Publishers Weekly wrote, “Hill's poems illustrate how oppression can summon inner strength, resistance, and revolution.”

            A few days later, on Facebook, I saw a post by a friend from my college days about his being in a conference and meeting a couple of his former students—one of whom turned out to be DaMaris Hill.

            Two people, from vastly different times in my life, who know each other, and know me. I love these small world stories.

            What was your last small world story?

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I’m participating in the 12th annual Slice of Life Challenge over at Two Writing Teachers. This is day 1 of the 31-day challenge.  It’s not too late to make space for daily writing in a community that is encouraging, enthusiastic, and eager to read what you have to slice about.  Join in!

SOL1: What I Learned About Medical Insurance Today

            I’m 76, using Medicare. My new doctor wants me to get another pneumonia vaccine even though I had one with my old doctor some years ago.

            I went to my usual independent pharmacy today to see if I could get it there. The pharmacist said that the cost would be $279. She said that my Part D insurance doesn’t cover that vaccine, and this pharmacy doesn’t have a contract that covers the vaccine under Part B. However, I could try going to a chain pharmacy and see if their contract under Part B would cover it.

            This is the first time I’ve had any problem with coverage. Why should it make a difference what pharmacy I get the vaccine at? Why do the chains have a contract with Medicare Part B for coverage for this vaccine, but not this independent pharmacy?

            My pharmacy has the best customer service. They call if I’ve forgotten to get refills for my regular medications. They keep track of when prescriptions expire and will call my doctor to get new ones. My local chain pharmacy has never done any of this.

            What about yours? Do you have an independent pharmacy near you? Does your local chain pharmacy provide good service?

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I’m participating in the 12th annual Slice of Life Challenge over at Two Writing Teachers. This is day 1 of the 31-day challenge.  It’s not too late to make space for daily writing in a community that is encouraging, enthusiastic, and eager to read what you have to slice about.  Join in!